Early world maps
Videos
The earliest known world maps date to classical antiquity, the oldest examples of the 6th to 5th centuries BCE still based on the flat Earth paradigm. World maps assuming a spherical Earth first appea
A 1628 reconstruction of Posidonius' ideas about the positions of continents (many details could not have been known by Posidonius)
Modern re-drawing of the Tabula Peutingeriana, from Iberia in the west, to India in the east.
Original Tabula Rogeriana (1154) with south up.
Anaximander
Videos
Anaximander was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher who lived in Miletus, a city of Ionia. He belonged to the Milesian school and learned the teachings of his master Thales. He succeeded Thales and becam
Early world maps
…The seventh region lay in the east and is "where the morning dawns". Anaximander (died c. 546 BCE) is credited with having created one of the first maps of the world, which was circular in form and showed the known lands of the world…
Anaximander in a 17th century portrait by Pietro Bellotti
Ancient Roman mosaic from Johannisstraße, Trier, dating to the early third century AD, showing Anaximander holding a sundial
Detail of Raphael's painting The School of Athens, 1510–1511. This could be a representation of Anaximander leaning towards Pythagoras on his left.
The sight of stars circling the Pole star and vanishing and reappearing at the horizon could have suggested to Anaximander that the Earth was surrounded above and below by a void.